By Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
MILLBRIDGE ó Barbara Harrison has been warning that the approaching winter will be a rough one, and she’s got the proof to back up her claim:
The woolly worms have spoken.
“Look at their color,” Harrison cautioned.
The stripes on a woolly worm have long been considered an indicator of the severity of an approaching winter. The caterpillars have 13 segments, each, old-timers say, indicating a week of winter.
Generally speaking, the darker the stripes, the worse the winter.
Or so legend has it.
The woolly worm that Harrison stumbled across last week near her home in Millbridge is solid black.
“Brown segments indicate a mild winter,” Harrison said. “Black is more severe.”
Which means, she said, we should all be prepared to button up our overcoats this winter.
Harrison is well-known around Rowan County as “Butterfly Barbara.” She often addresses school groups and speaks to children at Dan Nicholas Park about monarch and other types of butterflies.
“I try to get kids interested in butterflies,” Harrison said.
So her transition to an interest in woolly worms, she admitted, was something of a natural step.
“Woolly worm” is a common name for the larval stage of the Isabella tiger moth. The scientific name for this insect is “Pyrrhactia isabella.”
Other common names for this caterpillar are “woolly bears,” “black-ended bears” and “banded woolly bears” (the name approved by the Entomological Society of America).
Woolly worms grow from 1 to 3 inches long and are found throughout the United States.
Interest in the woolly worm is especially strong in the colder, mountain counties of North Carolina. Appalachian State University once had a study of the woolly worm and Banner Elk still has an annual festival dedicated to the celebration of the creature.
Banner Elk’s 31st Annual Woolly Worm Festival was held this past weekend. Cindy Goedhart, one of the event’s organizers, said the festival typically attracts 20,000 to 25,000 people.
She said turnout for this year’s festival was strong despite the fact that Saturday dawned clear and cold.
Goedhart said the study of the woolly worm was in the works long before the English settled what was to become the United States.
“The Indians believed each segment was related to a week of winter,” she said, echoing Harrison’s comments.
From there, mountain folks took up the practice.
Goedhart said the woolly worms studied at last weekend’s festival were in agreement with Harrison’s woolly worm in that the coming winter has the potential of being fairly rough.
According to those Banner Elk woolly worms, the first four weeks of winter will be cold and snowy. With the exception of the 10th and 11th weeks of winter, cold and snow are expected to be more the norm than the exception.
But Goedhart said there aren’t many residents of Banner Elk who are complaining about such a forecast.
“We kind of like it cold and snowy,” she said. “We’re right here between three ski slopes.”